The present invention relates to a guidance confirmation apparatus and method of confirming various kinds of guidance prepared in an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) network.
Related arts of a guidance confirmation apparatus of this type are apparatuses or systems disclosed in reference 1 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-243385), reference 2 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-111658), reference 3 (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-307637), and reference 4 (Japanese Laid-Open Patent No. 2007-515854).
In the apparatus disclosed in reference 1, when a telephone terminal status reception unit receives a failure notification of a telephone terminal from a monitoring device, the call of a client telephone connected to the telephone terminal is transferred to a guidance sending terminal. The guidance sending terminal sends a guidance announcement to the client telephone of the transfer source.
The system disclosed in reference 2 connects the calling end to an automatic answering testing device if the receiving side is not connectable. The connected automatic answering testing device returns, to the calling end, an immediate message representing the reason why the destination side is not obtainable at the time of origination. Hence, the calling end can acquire the immediate message representing the reason why the destination side is not obtainable without any complex answering test.
In the system disclosed in reference 3, a local exchange receives a temporary response signal to an ID reception terminal activation signal and sends a test code (origination telephone number information for test) to the ID reception terminal in place of origination telephone number information which should be sent to the ID reception terminal. The ID reception terminal confirms the test code and returns the information back to the local exchange. The test board of the local exchange collates the sent origination telephone number information for test with the returned information, thereby performing loop-back confirmation.
In the system disclosed in reference 4, when a user terminal device UE transmits a registration message to an IMS network, the IMS network authenticates the user terminal device UE and transmits an acknowledge OK to it. Then, proper data exchange starts between the user terminal device UE and the IMS network.
However, the above-described related arts do not allow a maintenance person to, e.g., easily confirm whether various kinds of guidance prepared in the IMS network are correct or not.